I am not a Pakistani. Nor am I closely familiar with events in Pakistan. But it strikes me, just on a casual perusal of the papers, that if your constitution were a nuclear reactor, it would be Chernobyl. If it was a bassist, it would be Sid Vicious. If it was a ship, it would be the Edmund Fitzgerald. Etc, etc, etc. While a leaky reactor, a homicidal rhythm section, or an overloaded ore carrier are not exactly things you want in your living room, each one beats the hell out of a malfunctioning constitution.

And do you really want to go in there with a wrench? Just toss the thing. History is littered with discarded failed constitutions. The failure of the Pakistani constitution does not reflect in any way on the residents of Pakistan. It reflects on whoever wrote the Pakistani constitution. In fact, it doesn't even reflect on them. It's an engineering failure. It happens.

Two, abolish politics in Pakistan. Politicized democracy in the Indian subcontinent has failed. Its record is murderous at worst, criminal on average, and disgraceful at best. Your present enemies are not in any way, shape or form atypical. Except of course that the Soros people have done so much for their PR.

Here is how to abolish politics: involuntarily retire all Pakistani judges, journalists and editors, teachers and professors, NGO employees, and politicians. Pardon them fully and unconditionally for any crimes they may have committed. In fact, award them half-pay pensions for their service to Pakistan, which was counterproductive but often sincere.

Seize and permanently confiscate all media and publishing firms in Pakistan, all party buildings and funds, all private schools and universities, and all nongovernmental organizations. Abolish the parties permanently. Reorganize and rename the schools and universities, confining their mission to science and engineering. Import Western or Western-trained scientists and engineers, at competitive salaries, to bootstrap university departments. Put army officers in charge of the NGOs, and handle them case by case.

Invite any Pakistani entrepreneurs who feel sympathy with the old regime to join this purge. They can sell their companies to the Pakistani state for their full present market value. You can pay for this by printing money - cancelling the proceeds when you reprivatize the company will equalize the inflationary balance. Let anyone who is considering selling know, however, that the offer will not be repeated.

Three, expel all Western official journalists, and imprison or expel (their choice) the stringers. Make any contact with the Western official press illegal.

Pakistan is a modern, civilized country. Or at least many parts of it are. It is not North Korea, it cannot be turned into North Korea, and it should not be turned into North Korea. Pakistan cannot be made opaque to the West.

However, the West can be compelled to get all its news from Pakistan via the Internet. There will be both pro-military and anti-military Pakistani bloggers. Some of them may even be the journalists you have just retired. This is totally fine and normal.

Except inasmuch as they are directly organizing violence, demonstrations, rioting, etc, do not interfere in any way, shape or form with bloggers. Censorship is difficult to reverse, because when you lift a system of censorship, you look weak. And when you impose censorship, you also look weak. So you get it both ways, as we say in San Francisco.

In fact, it might be a good idea to run official contests for the best supportive, neutral, and dissident blogs, using independent judges and awarding fat prizes. Your goal is to create a situation where anti-government intellectuals have nothing to complain about except the fact that they are not in charge of the government - and in which this fact has no conceivable prospect of changing.

Once this is achieved, your enemies can blog up any kind of storm, without threatening the state in the slightest. As Bismarck put it: "they say what they want. I do what I want." This was probably not really true for Bismarck. But there's no reason you can't make it true for you.

Four, declare independence from the West. Starting now, politely decline all aid, military or financial, from any Western country. You won't be able to buy Western-quality arms or parts anywhere, but you can get stuff almost as good from Russia and China.

Follow Putin's lead in prohibiting any financial traffic or organizational affiliation between any Pakistani organization and any non-Pakistani, except of course for genuine commercial or financial links. The NGOs are your enemy. There is no way to buy them off. It's them or you.

Five, announce that you will respond to any invasion of Pakistan with a nuclear strike on Delhi. This is known to be within your plausible power. It is sufficient to deter the West. And it will not strike Westerners as aggressive, except possibly toward India.

Make peace with India by unconditionally accepting the status-quo Line of Control in Kashmir as the permanent international border. Open talks on the technical details of normalization.

For your new nuclear posture, your objective is defense against any adversary with stronger conventional and nuclear forces. Declare that your standard response to any sustained infringement of Pakistani sovereignty will be to destroy one foreign city, perhaps Delhi although anything big will do, then surrender unconditionally.

The key to this strategy is that it is plausible - an attacker has no good reason to doubt that you will follow through. The goal is not to win a war, but to prevent one from happening. The adversary has to decide which he prefers: (a) the status quo, or (b) the status quo, plus ownership of Pakistan - but assuming the destruction of one city. Ideally his own, but any hostage will do.

In my humble opinion, as long as Pakistan is not itself behaving aggressively, there is no superpower on earth today that would even consider considering (b). Perhaps such a power is conceivable. But it is hard to conceive, given how demented its rulers would have to be.

Six, crush the Islamists. Give any armed organization on Pakistani territory thirty days to disarm and surrender, flee the country, or be destroyed by the Pakistani Army. You are equally amenable to all of these options. Offer unconditional amnesty to all rebels who surrender within this period.

Require all Islamic schools to register, and all Islamic teachers and scholars to be licensed, by the State. Prohibit them from promoting violence. Pay them for their good work.

Fortify the border with Afghanistan, sealing it except for border posts, until further notice. The Americans will be really pissed at you for a while, but they are not utterly stupid, and they will be happy with the results. Suggest that the Americans add their own layer of fence, so the border will be double-sealed, and allow them to do this with Pakistani labor if needed. There is no good reason to allow informal pedestrian traffic across the Durand Line.

Seven, for extra credit, declare that the future of Pakistan looks like Dubai, only better. Not all Pakistanis have been to Dubai, but they pretty much all get the idea.

You can get a leg up on Dubai by converting Pakistan into the world's first sovereign corporate republic. An SCR is a little like the monarchist structure used in the UAE, except that it works even better. It's a government design that should be at least as efficient as any modern Western corporation. It is designed to be invulnerable to any kind of systematic corruption. While the thing has never been tried and its success may be debatable, the SCR design certainly scales much better than the old medieval family-business approach.

In my humble opinion, a Pakistani SCR will make Dubai look backward. Your goal should be nothing less than a new equivalent of the Mughal period. Westerner tourists should be astonished and envious when they see Pakistan, as they already are in Dubai. Except more. The region now Pakistan was once one of the jewels of the world. It can become one again.

Any Pakistani SCR must start with a single initial owner: the Pakistani army. At present, this is unavoidable, because the army holds all physical power in the country. Formal and informal power should always be identical. However, military rule is not a desirable structure over the long term - not for the military, and not for anyone else.

Therefore, the army should convey ownership of the Pakistani corporate republic to its own officers (active and retired) and soldiers, distributing shares by rank and seniority. Whatever this distribution, it must be final - there are no further automatic dilutions. All new hires are just employees, whatever their rank.

A state, like any organization, is stable and efficient when those who own it are those who control it. However, this does not mean the owners and the employees must be the same people. If agent (employee) and principal (owner) can separate, the state will be much more stable and much more efficient. Owners need not even be residents of Pakistan, although this restriction should be retained for the foreseeable future - the twentieth century is not dead yet.

But in principle, any geographical pattern of residency among sovereign owners is undesirable. For maximum stability in a corporate republic, shareholders should be distributed around the financial world. Thus, there is no method by which a subset of shareholders can benefit themselves, and only themselves, by using their voting power to induce the republic's managers to mismanage it in a way that produces selective profit.

Selective profit exists whenever a corporation's dividends are not distributed formally and equally among its shares. Selective profit is always and in every case corruption. If a company favors one subset of shareholders, or of creditors in general, in any way not contractually specified, it is corrupt. ( The other general form of corporate corruption is agency profit, in which employees abuse their power of agency to skim off cream which should be going to the principals. Agency profit in governments is much better understood.)

Since selective and agency profit are generally (contrary to popular belief) rare in the Western corporate world, they should be equally easy to defeat in a sovereign corporate republic. Pakistan today has a reputation for corruption. In an SCR, this reputation will adhere to its proper target - the old constitution. The goal of any newly established SCR is to move to #1 on international transparency rankings, and stay there.

Eight, for serious extra credit, create at least one special economic zone whose currency of both exchange and accounting is gold. You may be surprised at how many people this annoys, and how much it annoys them. You may also be surprised at how profitable it will be for Pakistan.

To be precise, a 21st-century gold standard implies a 100%-reserve banking system run on the principles of Austrian economics, with strict maturity matching on all loans of any kind. This is not unlike certain interpretations of Islamic finance, and perhaps the point could be finessed.

Transitioning from a fiat currency to a gold standard is tricky. It's not unlike landing a plane. There are many ways to do it wrong, and one way to do it right. However, once the problem is solved correctly, it remains solved indefinitely.

And, at least if the Austrian analysis is correct, it is very clear that the first sovereign state to succeed in the transition will have at least the option of becoming the new financial capital of the world, as London was in the 19th century and New York for most of the 20th. You might want to talk to Benn Steil - I bet he has some ideas for how to pull it off.

(Update: please see the comment thread. There are many interesting discussions. I promise that I will actually answer questions in a reasonably prompt and diligent manner!)

40 Comments:

Implementation of this program by the military of Pakistan would involve killing and more killing. The transition to an SCR (is this the formalist equivalent to a "people's democracy"?) is starting to sound like revolutionary Universalism. I'm not liking this.

This meditation of yours on the current situation in Pakistan is useful to readers, as we get to take the SCR concept "out for a spin", as it were.

My question is this: with army control of foreign investment and foreign cultural interference minimized, with the disciplining of religious extremists and of the economy to the needs of the nation - and not International Capital in general - does your system differ in some essential way from the system promoted by Mussolini and Pound?

I'm reading the transcripts of Pound's wartime broadcasts and all of this is beginning to sound somewhat familiar, which is why I ask.

Please note: this observation is in no way intended as a slur. Mussolini's reforms were seen at the time, and all over the world, as an astonishing achievement for the somewhat dubious nation-state of Italy, which was having better luck at resisting the Depression than America and Britian, although it was quite backwards financially and politically in comparison to them. Brain trusts were stumped. England and America both stole shamelesly from M's playbook - as did an Austrian painter of some note later on - though results varied widely from country to country, with FDR's America showing, inexplicable, the worst results. Mitteleuropan results were intitially quite promising, but the system foundered on a biologistic innovation that, according to later observers, might have benefitted from some fine-tuning.

The Latins showed the most sustained growth combined with social harmony. Among other achievements, the Mafia was totally defeated, even in its historic holdouts in Sicily (later to be re-inserted by Americans). Time magazine's infamous quote, "the wops are unwopping themselves" sort of sums up world opinion at the time.

If we can bracket the connotative baggage of the "F-word" for a moment, could you expound on how the SCR is *not* Fascism 2.0?

Not that there's anything wrong with that. In addition to widespread admiration and imitation, there were higher level critiques of fascism which wondered if certain economic and social disorders of long standing in capitalism hadn't been solved by M's reforms. There are people who still wonder that, for which see Robert Locke's "Japan, Refutation of Liberalism": http://www.paecon.net/PAEReview/issue23/Locke23.htm

Locke's conclusion is that the modern Japanese cleverly pulled off the neat historical trick of smuggling a functioning fascist economy and social system past the imposed American Constitutional system, by a combination of ethnic homogeniety and some funny stuff in the money markets, but otherwise hewing to M's nutshell definition of Fascism 1.0: "Discipline the economy to the needs of the nation". It's a fascinating, possibly even a revolutionary, article.

Remember, the intense and even psychotic loathing held for Fascists by Communists was ultimately based on the perception that they had somehow elided the contradictions of Capital, intolerably postponing the day of Reckoning on which the Revolutionary Event depended. I suppose the question is, how right were they to fear this?

Recall, the original test run of these administrative and economic reforms was terminated, not by their failure, but by war.

If Locke is right about how modern Japan (and to some extent, Israel) operate, it may be the case that a sociopolitical system long thought extinct might in fact be functioning in plain sight, protected by the flimsiest forms of camoflague. I guess my question about SCR is: is there some camoflague here? Or am I missing something important? And, if you are suggesting that Fascism 2.0/ SCR needs some beta testing to work out the kinks, I suppose I have to ask: have you placed any tailors or graphic designers on retainer?

Any Pakistani SCR must start with a single initial owner: the Pakistani army... However, military rule is not a desirable structure over the long term - not for the military, and not for anyone else.

Yeah, I think I've seen this one before. The military takes control of the country for the good of everybody... and they'll stop the murdering and start the power-sharing sometime real soon now. Come on, just trust us.

Here's a concrete question for you: do you think the net history of human rights in Spain, Chile, and Jordan would have turned out (a) better, (b) the same, or (c) worse, if the PSUC, the UP, or the PLO had prevailed in their respective contests for power?

Here's another concrete question for you: do you think the net history of human rights in Cuba, Rhodesia, or Russia would have turned out (a), (b), or (c) if the Cuban Armed Forces, the Rhodesian Front, or the White Guards had prevailed in their respective contests for power?

If your answers to these questions are different from mine, I would be interested to hear them.

If they are the same, you agree that military rule is sometimes a good idea. In other words, as the old story goes, you've accepted the principle and started to discuss the details.

For some reason people seem to regularly mistake me for Mustapha Mond!

Basically, the tragedy of the 20th century is that one side was very right about some things, and very wrong about the others. The other side was very right about some things, and very wrong about the others. In Norman Davies' words, it was no simple victory.

I have read bits of the Pound transcripts, not the whole things. Are they on line somewhere? The parts I've seen were insightful in a few places, and terribly stupid in others. The way Pound tries to "talk down," and pitch his comments to the political mass market, is just awful, in my dim recollection.

As for my fashion sense, it has never been renowned. And as for graphic design, just look at the blog!

You are predicting that violence "killing and more killing" will be the result of any attempt to apply this program.

It's certainly possible. The world is a dangerous place. Violence is always risky. It will always be so.

But this is not to concede the Universalist article of faith in which violence never solves anything. I hate to attribute motivations, but I wonder if you are not applying this article unconsciously.

"Killing and more killing." In order to evaluate this prediction, I will need slightly more detail. Killing by definition involves two parties: killer and killee.

In the narrative you imagine unfolding here, who are the killers and who are the killees? Who will get killed, and why? Who will do the killing, and why?

The basic fact of politics is that no one likes to get killed. People will often fight, but it is hard to get anyone to fight without some prospect of victory.

My reasoning with this program is that the Pakistani state, at present, is providing its enemies with many prospects of political victory that are worth the risk of getting killed, especially to people who have little to lose. Pakistan is not a wealthy country by Western standards, but the rulers of any country are lovin' life.

My prescription, therefore, is that Pakistan can pacify itself with very little killing - only as much as its enemies need to see that it is serious, determined, and capable.

Let's say you lived in Pakistan. Do you think this program would be likely to result in your killing? Or would you be one of the killers? I don't know you and I don't know what you would do.

But if I lived in Pakistan, and this program were enacted in anything like the form I propose, I would find it very easy to avoid being killed, even if today I was in Bhutto's party. I would simply end any involvement I had with politics, and find something better to do with my life. Surely there are many such opportunities in any peaceful, prosperous society.

If I was unwilling to do this, if I continued to scheme for political power, perhaps I would indeed run the risk of being killed. But it would be a risk I had accepted.

The fundamental fallacy of the 20th century is that no one who does not carry a gun is a soldier. In fact, anyone working for any revision of political power has accepted a role that is fundamentally military. It is this elaborate and baroque mutation of the law of nations - read Vattel, Grotius or Pufendorf to clear your mind, or have a look at the Lieber Code - that is responsible for the entire concept of "asymmetrical warfare," which causes so much death and destruction today.

Results matter. You believe you have a prescription for peace. So do I. You argue that mine will only result in "killing, and more killing." Oddly enough, I have exactly the same view of yours.

Given that your prescription has been a key element of the official pharmacopeia for the entire Age of Democide, whereas mine is similar if not identical to that of the pre-democidal golden age of international law, I suggest that the comparison deserves slightly more thought than you have shared with us so far. I'm curious as to your response.

This piece would look less like an exercise in ignorance if you displayed any awareness of the fact that China is now and has been a closer ally to Pakistan than the U.S., and that the Pakistan army is riddled with outright Islamists and Islamist sympathizers (Musharref didn't make a deal with the tribal elements in the North at U.S. urging, it was because the Pakistani army couldn't be trusted to oppress them properly).

colin, thanks for a very interesting contribution. I especially liked the title of the site it appeared in -- Post-Autistic Economics, I love it.

However a bunch of quibbles come to mind. First, it's not that new an insight. I think the main point was captured in the short phrase "Japan Inc." that circulated around a few decades ago. Japan, due to its high degree of social cohesiveness, can run smoothly as essentially a single unified institution. Internal conflict no doubt exists but the mechanisms for dealing with it and making sure it doesn't disrupt the smooth functioning of the machine are strong. The ethnic unity of Japan no doubt plays a part.

Although the author contrasts Japan with France, I see more similarities than differences. Japan manages its capital markets, France manages its energy and transportation industry and other things. In both cases you have a strong state that takes an active role in the economy and manages to do a reasonable job of seeing to the long-term interests of the country and populace. France has more politics and more problems, but the similarity is that both are resisting the neoliberal, perfect-market mindset through state-organized central control.

The relevance of such examples to Pakistan, or the US, seems distant at best. Mencius seems to think that Musharaff can wave a magic wand and become the CEO of a well-managed corporate state through the application of well-structured business rules and lethal force that somehow is only applied to enemies of the new order. Leave aside the question of whether this is desireable. Why on earth should it be possible? What makes you think that Musharaff is strong enough to eliminate all political opposition by fiat? He's a thug who sits atop a fragile power structure that he's incapable of changing in any fundamental way, as is pretty much any political "leader". Fractious societies do not become smooth-running coporate entities overnight, or by the application of magic wands.

There's something similar going on with the valorization of Batista's Cuba or Tsarist Russia. The revolutions that overthrew those regimes may have been worse than what they replaced, but that is beside the point, people at the time didn't know that and didn't care. The point is is that those regimes sucked. They did not manage their territories in a manner that saw to the welfare of the occupants, which would have short-circuited the motives for revolution, nor were they strong enough to resist revolutionary forces once they were set in motion. They deserved what they got. History is merciless to those who play the power game and lose.

Now, it might have been nicer all around if those guys had been enlightened despots who could have managed their countries into the modern age with a fully intact monarchical authoritarianism in place. But they weren't. Back then and today, the supply of individuals who are both politically strong enough to exert despotic control and enlightened enough to do so in a way that produces benificence for all is severely limited.

I have big problems with "what ifs", but if the White Guard prevailed in Russia, it would be a pretty safe bet that neither you nor me would be alive today to discuss the relative merits of reds and whites. It is far more than bolshevik propaganda (to which I have obviously been exposed and there is no point denying this fact) that makes me say this. Unfortunately, this conjecture prevents me from evaluating your proposition on its possible other merits. I am hitting a psychological wall in considering a better world without myself (and UR, of course).

Back on topic, I don't think that if Musharraf attempted to follow through with your program he would succeed. Basically, I see fat chances of failure at every step.Actually, I would bet against the success of this plan at every single step you propose, which brings my estimate of its probability of success to below 1/256.

As earlier, you fail to see the merits of staying in the dark. Even those in positions of power often prefer to keep it informal to formalizing it in any way that they can reasonably hope for.

Have you formalized your relationship with your SO? Do you have a written contract? If not, have you tried drafting one? (These are not rhetorical questions, I'm genuinely curious, though, of course, I would accept an answer along the lines of it not being my business at all.)

Japan, due to its high degree of social cohesiveness, can run smoothly as essentially a single unified institution. Internal conflict no doubt exists but the mechanisms for dealing with it and making sure it doesn't disrupt the smooth functioning of the machine are strong.

This persistent stereotype is as true as most stereotypes--not very. I worked six years in a Japanese corporation and saw every bit as much backbiting, gossiping, obstructionism, and corporate jockeying as I have in my current American employer. Because Japanese culture puts a premium on hierarchy and politeness the office politics tend to be a bit more passive aggressive, but your average kaishin would feel right at home in North American company if he was fluent in English.

As far as I'm aware, US aid to Pakistan greatly exceeds Chinese aid to Pakistan. This is perhaps not the ideal quantitative way to define the "closeness" of a relationship. But I certainly can't think of any other.

As for Islamists, sure. I have no problem in acknowledging that the Pakistani military not only has strong historical ties to Islamists, but is probably even best blamed for creating them in the first place.

But I think you are making the characteristic Western mistake of assuming that non-Western actors are motivated primarily by emotion and/or and opinion.

The counterinsurgency motto of "winning hearts and minds" is accurate as far as the literal text goes. However, outside nice, happy Western countries, the process is far more about minds than about hearts.

In real shooting conflicts where people get hurt, where they win big and lose big, emotion and opinion play a relatively minor role. Reason and reality play a much bigger one.

As, of course, they should. It is the non-Westerners here who are the sane ones. If Pakistanis jump up and down and act crazy, odds are they are acting as part of some organized effort to influence Western behavior in some way. All the world is, indeed, a stage. And many of the performances are for your benefit.

In terms of reason and reality, here is how it works: if you are an Islamist in the Pakistani Army, while I'm sure you have perfectly sincere Islamic religious feelings, you probably also harbor a rational prediction that an eventual Islamist victory in Pakistan is certain. Change this person's prediction, and his heart has a very large chance of changing as well.

I wish you'd clarify your statement about the White Guards. But I'm guessing you have information that some particular unit of White Guards were associated with Black Hundreds elements or similar.

Since half my ancestors left Russia/Belarus/Ukraine before the war, precisely because of pogroms of the Black Hundreds type, this is no idle concern.

On the other hand, if you compare the stupidest, most repellent episodes of Tsarist or Black Hundreds anti-Semitic violence to the deeds of the Leninists, even if you make the stakes remotely fair by comparing the worst year of Black Hundreds violence to the mildest year of the Leninist terror, the former comes out ahead.

It is important not to shut one's eyes to evil. It is also important not to prefer the greater evil to the lesser. Sometimes people actually do have to choose. That this task is not easy does not render it unimportant.

You both make the same criticism, which I think is a good one. Let me rephrase and try to counter it.

It is certainly in the collective interest, and in the collective power, of the Pakistani Army to carry out the steps I propose above. Or at least, if you disagree with this, let me know.

But - as you point out - this does not mean it is in the individual power, or even the individual interest, of President Musharraf to carry out this program.

My short answer is that, since President Musharraf has not yet emailed me and I suspect he is quite unlikely to do so, the point is utterly unknowable and in fact quite irrelevant.

I have no idea what the informal powers of Musharraf may be. I suspect there are fewer than a hundred people who have any idea of how Musharraf and his top advisors relate. Perhaps only Musharraf himself knows. Perhaps he doesn't even know.

As other commenters have noted, I am writing basically in the spirit of Machiavelli's little love note to Cesare Borgia. If there is any evidence that Borgia took any notice of The Prince, I am unaware of it. And Machiavelli's social circle was certainly a few fewer degrees of separation away from Borgia's, than mine from Musharraf's!

So: perhaps Musharraf can persuade the Pakistani Army to act as a unit in its own best interests. Perhaps he can't. Obviously, if he is not really in control of the army, he cannot even think about enacting this program or any program like it.

On the other hand, not even the New York Times can conjure up any evidence of the contrary - try as they may. "No clear signs of opposition by the commanders have emerged so far." Gimme a C! Gimme an O! Gimme a U! ... The Times may be opposed to military coups as a general principle, but that doesn't seem to mean they don't have their eyes on the ball.

But it would be far easier for Musharraf to enact this program than for Chavez to do so, because the former is at least in command of an army.

Chavez's movement certainly includes the army. But it's much larger than that. It is more like a political party.

So the ideological gap to be traversed in a transition to the SCR structure is much wider in Venezuela. And there is really no ideologically tenable position between here and there.

This is why it is in general so difficult to normalize and formalize progressive sovcorps. They are actually designed to resist formalization. It is not just a coincidence.

A militarchy or a monarchy is much closer to flipping the switch, because it already has basically the right administrative structure. Converting to an SCR only involves a change in the financial model and the executive decision-making procedure.

Were you thinking about this feature in the NYT Magazine when you wrote this comment? In either case, good catch. But the NYT feature is pretty good, for an NYT feature. It goes quite a way toward asking the right questions.

There's something similar going on with the valorization of Batista's Cuba or Tsarist Russia. The revolutions that overthrew those regimes may have been worse than what they replaced, but that is beside the point, people at the time didn't know that and didn't care. The point is is that those regimes sucked. They did not manage their territories in a manner that saw to the welfare of the occupants

True. At least by my standards.

which would have short-circuited the motives for revolution

False, in my opinion. I think this is another example of the "hearts, not minds" fallacy.

nor were they strong enough to resist revolutionary forces once they were set in motion.

Perhaps this book will change your perception of what actually happened in the Cuban Revolution.

See also this. To read a document like this, focus on the actual facts of what happened, and ignore the unsubstantiated claims about Cuban public opinion.

The facts are not at all disputed. Castro was installed by the Polygon. This decision was made in Washington and New York. Batista's army collapsed when the US imposed an arms embargo. His adversaries were essentially the same as in the cases of Diem, Chiang, and Rhee.

In short, these "revolutionary forces" may well have been revolutionary. They were certainly forces. But that doesn't mean their kids didn't go to school at Sidwell Friends.

They deserved what they got. History is merciless to those who play the power game and lose.

You're sounding pretty merciless yourself!

What about the residents of Cuba? Did they deserve what they got, as well? Not that I don't love Mencken and his little formula. But this is taking it a bit too far for me. Perhaps I am merciless, but it doesn't mean I have to be utterly heartless.

I worked six years in a Japanese corporation and saw every bit as much backbiting, gossiping, obstructionism, and corporate jockeying as I have in my current American employer. Because Japanese culture puts a premium on hierarchy and politeness the office politics tend to be a bit more passive aggressive, but your average kaishin would feel right at home in North American company if he was fluent in English.

FWIW, while I only worked for a few months in a US subsidiary of a Japanese corporation, my perception was the same.

Rather than nasty, I thought 'shareholder despotism' might hit a sweet spot. It captures what opponents will hate, without necessarily being unfair to the ideas. You have after all called out Frederick the Great, an emblematic enlightened despot, as one of the "closest historical equivalents" to your approach.

(ObPakistan: on September 17th, before the latest events, someone briefly added Musharraf to Wikipedia's list of Enlightened Absolutists.)

mm: False, in my opinion. I think this is another example of the "hearts, not minds" fallacy.

I'm not sure what point you are making. Mine was just that revolutions don't happen when people are happy and materially well-off. Rather more of a stomach issue than either hearts or minds.

me: nor were they strong enough to resist revolutionary forces once they were set in motion.

mm: Perhaps this book will change your perception of what actually happened in the Cuban Revolution.

Batista's army collapsed when the US imposed an arms embargo. If Batista required US arms to prop him up than ipso facto he was not sufficiently powerful to rule on his own. He was a puppet, and thus a failure as an authoritarian.

The facts are not at all disputed. Castro was installed by the Polygon. This decision was made in Washington and New York....His adversaries were essentially the same as in the cases of Diem, Chiang, and Rhee....In short, these "revolutionary forces" may well have been revolutionary. They were certainly forces. But that doesn't mean their kids didn't go to school at Sidwell Friends.

You are sounding very conspiratorial here. I think the facts are quite disputed, but let's not go there. As usual, you seem to place an inordinate amount of power in the hands of journalists, and you've found a book that seems to do the same. Despite the use of "invented" in the title, which makes it seem as if Castro was being run from the pressroom, the book's actual contents seem to prove no more than a reporter was gullible and got suborned into a propaganda role. Big whoop. That does not mean the New York Times created Castro or rules the world.

me: They deserved what they got. History is merciless to those who play the power game and lose.

mm: You're sounding pretty merciless yourself!What about the residents of Cuba? Did they deserve what they got, as well?

It is the fate of the people to get shat upon by the powerful, to a greater or lesser extent. I don't know whether the ordinary residents of Cuba were worse off under Castro than they would have been under a continued Batista regime, or not, but that's entirely irrelevant to the point I was trying to make. You are the one who advocates authoritarian regimes as some kind of tool capable of ushering in a golden age, where all will work merrily for monetary gain, forego political conflict, and restrict their actions to those mediated by law and contract. Let's grant that possibility for the sake of argument. In that case, my point is that authoritarians who fail to maintain their authority are truly worthless. A brutal authoritarian regime that produces stable order has some justification for their crimes, but failed authoritarians have the crime without the upside. Buh-bye.

Again, if I'm not being clear, the point is not to decide which of Castro or Batista we like better, the point is that you can't wish away the Castros by creating a class of effective authoritarians out of thin air. Batista was chucked out because he could be. By your lights, and his, the fact that that happened should be its own justification.

Musharaff is in a similar position. Your suggestion is essentially that this brutal but limited bureaucrat-thug convert himself into a figure who has absolute power, the unwavering loyalty of his underlings, and the taste to use his power to create the kind of society you'd like. Forgive me if I find this an unlikely prospect, even if your proposal lands on top of his inbox.

If they are the same, you agree that military rule is sometimes a good idea.

Oh, absolutely. I might even agree it's a good (i.e. least bad) idea for Pakistan. What I'm skeptical of is the idea that military rulers would create a Formalist paradise, act in any way non-selfishly, ever voluntarily cede power, and always act perfectly rationally.

You propose that the Pakistan military imprison or exile the lawyers, journalists, and NGO activists. Furthermore, these Univeralist running-dogs - er, I mean, civil society leaders - have allied themselves with the powerful feudal mafia landlord Benazir Bhutto. Intellectuals + rent-a-mob = a pretty fucking scary Leninist organization. They will not cede power without putting up a ferocious fight.

Bhutto allows herself to be surrounded by police and barbed wire so that the Associated Press can get their photo-ops. She may even agree to return to exile in Dubai, as long as she is able to control affairs within Pakistan from afar. But she will no longer play nice if Musharraf tries to dismantle her organization within Pakistan and expel all agents of the Universalist Inernational ("UnIntern") from Pakistan.

How many foot-soldiers for the Pakistan Peoples Party will need to be shot in order to put down the ensuing mob violence? 1000? 10000? How many dissident lawyers and journalists will need to be disappeared and tortured to root out UnIntern subversion? And what should the military do when the Islamists start their own revolution in the border provinces while the government is preoccupied with the urban secular opposition? How many more thousands of them will need to be killed?

And once you've got the killing machine up and running, how do you control it? Targets multiply: vindictive informers turn the security apparatus against their personal enemies; identities are mistaken; accidental bystander witnesses must be silenced; friends and family of the victims must also be liquidated, because they are also potential enemies of the state; members of the military who fail to carry out their oders must be punished for disloyalty; etc.

Not many people are being killed in Pakistan today. As long as Musharraf cooperates, this low rate of killing will be maintained. Why rock the boat?

MM the principal problem remains that every attempt to abolish politics has ended in totalitarianism. Given that you frequently recomend Ellis' The Dark Side of the Left I assume you know this. What I don't see is you accounting for it.

You seem to be falling victim to a static analysis of the situation. The Polygon will respond (either out of a threat to their power or because they are true believers) in the way they usually do and do things like sanction Pakistan until it caves like Rhodesia. Second, Musharraf's enemies in Pakistan are already numerous(we don't know in control he is, but this move seems to indicate he is in trouble) and will attract new supporters (again, anyone who's power is threatened or who is a true believer) many of whom are likely members of the military and who will work to undermine him at any cost.

Politicized democracy in the Indian subcontinent has failed. Its record is murderous at worst, criminal on average, and disgraceful at best.Is it really so bad in India itself? From what I hear it's near China's level of functioning.

Here is how to abolish politics: involuntarily retire all Pakistani judges, journalists and editors, teachers and professors, NGO employees, and politicians. [...] Seize and permanently confiscate all media and publishing firms in Pakistan, all party buildings and funds, all private schools and universities, and all nongovernmental organizations. Abolish the parties permanently. Reorganize and rename the schools and universitiesThink of the leaders who have done things similar to what you advocate. Does it generally turn out well? I know you add caveats so that if he did it YOUR way, which has never been done before, it could work out, but as I told Kevin Carson that sounds like you're expecting a cat to bark.

Three, expel all Western official journalists, and imprison or expel (their choice) the stringers. Make any contact with the Western official press illegal.Then it will all just be unofficial sources. It's hard to restrict the flow of information when the internet's around.

However, the West can be compelled to get all its news from Pakistan via the Internet.The differences between the internet and the MSM are greatly exaggerated. Blog readership has a power-law distribution, with the ones on top academics or previously well-known journalists. They really are the most talented at the spreading of ideas.

There will be both pro-military and anti-military Pakistani bloggers.And there are very tall Chinese people, but you completely ignored the distribution. The Guardian had Ali Eteraz pushing a pro-Musharaff line (albeit before he declared full-on martial law), so we could just as easily say that the MSM has pro and anti voices.

So you get it both ways, as we say in San Francisco.I'm not from around there and I'm not sure what you mean.

In fact, it might be a good idea to run official contests for the best supportive, neutral, and dissident blogs, using independent judges and awarding fat prizes.Nobody is going to believe the judges are independents and the contests will lack legitimacy.

Your goal is to create a situation where anti-government intellectuals have nothing to complain about except the fact that they are not in charge of the governmentThere are always things to complain about.

Four, declare independence from the West. Starting now, politely decline all aid, military or financial, from any Western country. You won't be able to buy Western-quality arms or parts anywhere, but you can get stuff almost as good from Russia and China.I think Musharraf would have already done that if it was pain-free as you make it out to be.

Make peace with India by unconditionally accepting the status-quo Line of Control in Kashmir as the permanent international border. Open talks on the technical details of normalization.I think a lot of people in the border-region don't give a fig what Musharraf thinks the acceptable border is.

Six, crush the Islamists. Give any armed organization on Pakistani territory thirty days to disarm and surrender, flee the country, or be destroyed by the Pakistani Army.They've been giving the Pakistani army a bloody nose for a while now. I don't think any crushing is going to happen. A negotiated deal seems most likely.

Fortify the border with Afghanistan, sealing it except for border posts, until further notice.That sounds like a good idea, but in that kind of wild mountainous terrain it could be difficult.

Seven, for extra credit, declare that the future of Pakistan looks like Dubai, only better.Then brace for laughter.

You can get a leg up on Dubai by converting Pakistan into the world's first sovereign corporate republic.I lean with Greg Clark here. Institutions aren't as all-powerful as we like to think. Some backward countries are simply intractable. Even under British rule, India deindustrialized.

The region now Pakistan was once one of the jewels of the world.Huh?

Any Pakistani SCR must start with a single initial owner: the Pakistani army. At present, this is unavoidable, because the army holds all physical power in the country.The islamists and tribal types would beg to differ.

active and retiredIn what sense do retired officers currently wield power?

You may be surprised at how many people this annoys, and how much it annoys them.Austrians often seem to think there is some sort of anti-gold conspiracy that hates the standard, but my impression is that it just strikes them as quaint/eccentric.

Transitioning from a fiat currency to a gold standard is tricky. It's not unlike landing a plane. There are many ways to do it wrong, and one way to do it right. However, once the problem is solved correctly, it remains solved indefinitely.Has anyone ever pulled it off?

And, at least if the Austrian analysis is correct, it is very clear that the first sovereign state to succeed in the transition will have at least the option of becoming the new financial capital of the world, as London was in the 19th century and New York for most of the 20th.You're right, being populated by Englishmen had nothing to do with it. And Sweden is among the most backward countries on earth because of its anti-formalist institutions.

For some reason people seem to regularly mistake me for Mustapha Mond!Are you sure it's not the same guy as last time?

In Norman Davies' words, it was no simple victory.Your link does not work.

or have a look at the Lieber Code - that is responsible for the entire concept of "asymmetrical warfare,"Don't tell me you're one of the idiots who thinks the "Werewolves" were comparable to modern muslim insurgents.

BTW, that Robert Locke article on Japan is really good. Here's the link again.Praising "post-autistic economics"! That will get your Austrian card revoked.

This piece would look less like an exercise in ignorance if you displayed any awareness of the fact that China is now and has been a closer ally to Pakistan than the U.S., and that the Pakistan army is riddled with outright Islamists and Islamist sympathizers (Musharref didn't make a deal with the tribal elements in the North at U.S. urging, it was because the Pakistani army couldn't be trusted to oppress them properly).Agreed. There should be more discussion of the relevance of the Sino-Soviet split to current events.

I especially liked the title of the site it appeared in -- Post-Autistic Economics, I love it.Are you telling me you'd never heard of PAE?

There's something similar going on with the valorization of Batista's Cuba or Tsarist Russia. The revolutions that overthrew those regimes may have been worse than what they replaced, but that is beside the point, people at the time didn't know that and didn't care. The point is is that those regimes sucked.Under Batista Cuba had a net positive rate of migration with respect to many first world countries. Perhaps compared to some platonic ideal it sucked, but it was better than some quite livable places.

saw to the welfare of the occupants, which would have short-circuited the motives for revolutionAre you now going to tell me you'd never heard of "the perils of prosperity"? You'll notice that North Korea hasn't lost it's government, Russia was doing better than ever when the Soviet Union collapsed, France and Russia both had their revolutions when things were improving. I think you need do some disentangling of your positive and normative beliefs.

In real shooting conflicts where people get hurt, where they win big and lose big, emotion and opinion play a relatively minor role. Reason and reality play a much bigger one.My guess is that when shooting starts rationality goes right out the window. Most massacres that occur in war don't actually further the objective of winning, they're just the kind of things that people do in those situations.

If Pakistanis jump up and down and act crazy, odds are they are acting as part of some organized effort to influence Western behavior in some way.You seem to assume the world revolves our opinions. Other cultures have had crazy rituals that clearly seem to have a signalling purpose long before they were aware of the existence of the West.

Change this person's prediction, and his heart has a very large chance of changing as well.I would actually agree with that point, but I think you overestimate the influence of rationality on those estimations.

His adversaries were essentially the same as in the cases of Diem, Chiang, and Rhee.South Korea actually didn't do too bad after Rhee.

Mine was just that revolutions don't happen when people are happy and materially well-off. Rather more of a stomach issue than either hearts or minds.As I mentioned above, you're wrong. Notice that Mugabe and Kim Jong Il are still in charge.

me: Mine was just that revolutions don't happen when people are happy and materially well-off. Rather more of a stomach issue than either hearts or minds.tggp : As I mentioned above, you're wrong. Notice that Mugabe and Kim Jong Il are still in charge.First off, I was claiming that material deprivation is a necessary condition, not a sufficient one. I'm sure there is plenty of pent-up demand for revolution in North Korea, but they don't have any mechanism to bring it about.

Second, your larger point is probably right, the conditions that bring about revolution are more complicated. What I was trying to say is that competent authoritarian rulers either are so ruthless that everybody is cowed (as in North Korea), or manage to keep people happy enough so they don't feel the temptation to mount a challenge, or some combination thereof.

Third, my larger point is independent of all that. The point was that MM justifies authoritarian regimes by their supposed ability to create order and prosperity. An authoritarian regime that gets overthrown, for whatever reason, has failed in its basic task and thus has no justification at all. The deposed thugs can go cry in their beer about the nasty communists or whoever all they want, but they lost at their own game, so nobody should have any pity for them.

Regarding the White Guard: AFAIK, the Black Hundreds were mostly active during the pre-WW1 period and they were responsible for old-school pogroms, terrorizing the Jewish population: killing a few people, destroying some property, looting and intimidating the rest.

My grandfather's stories (which are very much in agreement with those of Bulgakov, who, unlike my grandfather, was by no means a communist) are not about them. They are specifically about Denikin's army (and the Ukrainian nationalists of Petlyura, but that was a third force, neither red nor white). These were no old-school pogroms, but systematic ethnic cleansing, killing all that did not manage to escape. While in emigration, Denikin might have written good-sounding things about how noble his fight has been, but on the ground, his army was doing things that the world at large thinks to be unique to Nazis.

The Russian civil war of 1917-1922 claimed about 10 million lives. It is only now that the successors of the two sides are slowly inching towards reconciliation. To be fair, Putin is doing a good job of letting it happen: the "reds" got the Soviet anthem and red army day, the "whites" got the tricolor, the eagle and the ceremonial burials of the Romanovs and the White Generals. Both are allowed to feel that the Russian Federation is their country.